ALDI to trial unwrapped vegetables in Scottish stores

Gordon Holmes

ALDI is to trial selling cabbages and cauliflowers without any plastic packaging in all its Scottish stores.

The supermarket, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in Scotland, will focus on five vegetable lines - savoy cabbage, red cabbage, white cabbage, pointed cabbage and cauliflower.

Customers across Scotland will now be able to buy these vegetables plastic-free, and the six-week trial is estimated to save half a ton of plastic.

If rolled out across the UK, the initiative would remove more than 110 tonnes of plastic wrapping a year from ALDI’s fresh produce lines.

This trial follows the supermarket’s decision to phase out hard-to-recycle black plastic trays on four fresh produce lines, replacing them with clear, recyclable alternatives last year.

Fritz Walleczek, Managing Director of Corporate Responsibility at ALDI UK, said: “We’re working hard to reduce plastic, but we also need to ensure that reducing packaging doesn’t lead to unnecessary food waste.

“We’re hoping the outcome of this trial will be positive, and something that we can roll out across the rest of the UK.”

Since March 2018, ALDI has replaced more than 2,500 tonnes of plastic across its range with recyclable alternatives, and the supermarket is working to achieve 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging across its own-brand products by 2022.

As well as celebrating the 25th anniversary of ALDI opening its first store in Scotland, 2019 also marks the 10th anniversary of the creation of the supermarket’s dedicated Scottish buying department.

This year ALDI is opening seven new stores across Scotland, creating an additional 200 jobs by the end of 2019, in East Kilbride, Dalgety Bay, Dundee, Crieff, Milngavie, Cumbernauld and Leith, Edinburgh.